Hackintosh - the latest update with added patience

Last time I wrote about my experiences upgrading my Dell Mini 9 "Hackintosh" to Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.0. I decided to stop relating the story after I'd successfully achieved that because I wanted you all to share the warm feeling (smug,even?) that I had at the time. In reality that was a bit of a fib because the following 24 hours were a bit of a nightmare as I tried to go one better and update the OS to 10.6.3.

Suffice it to say, I've now become rather adept of installing the original retail version of Snow Leopard and I'm really pleased that I decided to keep my Snow Leopard installation USB drive as it has certainly had a lot of use. But the thing I've learnt most from the exercise is that when you're messing about with any Hackintosh project, the most important thing to remember is to be patient. Very, very patient! I now believe that if I had that in mind when I first started the upgrade I would have saved myself hours and hours of extra work and would have not have lost quite so much sleep.

As I mentioned last time, the instructions I had only went as far as upgrading to 10.6.2, which suited me fine, despite knowing that 10.6.3 was already out there, and clever people had successfully installed it onto their Dell Mini 9 netbooks. To be honest, I was happy enough with 10.6.0, but like many people reading this, I'm a bit of a serial upgrader and I can't help myself from tinkering.

After completing the basic Snow Leopard installation I tried installing the stand-alone combo update for 10.6.2, rather than using Software Update to go straight to 10.6.3. This didn't work as the combo update reported a problem with the disk I was trying to install to. There wasn't anything wrong with it (it was the Runcore SSD) but I couldn't argue with the installer.

So I decided to brave the storm and run Software Update and go the whole hog. Everything seemed to download and install without any problems. But this is when patience was required. Instead of waiting a reasonable amount of time after restarting the machine and getting the spinning spoke wheel I had a kind of panic attack and after only a few seconds decided that the machine was knackered. I now know that I should probably have waited at least 10 minutes before allowing pessimism to take hold.

The result of the impatience was a completely useless netbook. Subsequent re-booting simply resulted in kernel panics. So began the first of many reinstallations of the vanilla 10.6.0. After a few long days I finally had the machine working properly again and decided to call it a day and be satisfied with what I'd got (another good lesson!).

Yesterday however, I had a small network crisis and I managed to lose Ethernet functionality on the netbook. I reran the NetbookInstaller programme (0.8.4 RC1) but this had no effect. In a moment of madness I ran the DellEFI programme left over from the initial conversion to Leopard which had a devastating effect. [Reminder to all Dell Mini 9 users - delete the DellEFI app before attempting to use the NetbookInstaller/NetbookBootMaker combination now recommended]


It was time to reinstall for the umpteenth time. This time I decided to have another go at the full 10.6.3 installation but with added patience. The whole process took about four hours, and I left well alone as much as possible. There were one or two moments when I thought everything had stopped, but I managed to refrain from interfering and let things happen at their own pace.

I'm happy to say that the Hackintosh is once again fully functional in its latest incarnation with 10.6.3 and Safari 5.0 no less fully installed. Everything seems to work fine - wireless, ethernet, Bluetooth, sound, video, and even sleep.

So it is possible, it isn't that difficult, but it does require nerves of steel and a whole load of... altogether now... PATIENCE!

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Hackintosh - Three Months On

We had our first proper frost at the Apple Harvest last night. That, along with the rapidly diminishing hours of daylight, reminded me that it has now been three months since my last post dedicated to my Hackintosh. I've mentioned it in passing, but it is about time for a proper update, since my Google web tools tell me that it's still the most popular subject that I've written about.

The truth is that there really hasn't been much to report. For new readers, my Hackintosh is a Dell Mini 9 with a 32Gb RunCore SSD, currently running OS X 10.5.8. I wanted a netbook to sit alongside my iMac, MacBook Pro and iPhone and complement my existing Apple environment. Specifically, I wanted something small and light to take on short journeys without having to drag the MBP around so that I could get on-line, jot down notes and blog posts and check mail. Admittedly, I haven't made that many short journeys, so perhaps the Hackintosh hasn't been subjected to quite what it was intended for, but it did get a fair bit of use when the MBP was 'hors de combat' earlier in the autumn.

As expected it isn't a permanent replacement for the MBP. The single biggest issue is that screen real estate is so restricted that some internet applications can be a little difficult to use. I don't have the same problems with the keyboard that some people have reported, and my bluetooth mouse works like a treat. The machine can be a bit temperamental when I start it up, sometimes requiring a restart after a minute or so, but generally that doesn't cause too much inconvenience. I've had the same problem with Windows laptops costing three or four times what the Hackintosh cost.

The only thing that keeps nagging at me is the fact that I'm still running Leopard on the Hackintosh, whilst the rest of the Apple Harvest is now on Snow Leopard 10.6.2. Now I know that 10.6.2 will not work on the Dell's Atom processor, but I wouldn't mind being a bit more consistent in terms of running some of the native OS X apps like Mail.

Last night I finally found some instructions on how to upgrade the Dell Mini 9 using the RunCore. I've printed out all 20 pages (18 pages are comments) and have begun to peruse the contents. It doesn't seem too complicated, especially having made the original modifications, but I have to confess to being a bit nervous. I have a complete Time Machine backup and a Carbon Copy clone, so it'll be easy enough to restore the current system. But do I really want to screw up a perfectly good setup, just to satisfy a technical urge and a bit of curiosity ?

I think I need to sleep on this over several nights before taking the plunge. Watch this space...

Hackintosh Unveiled